VR-Zone.com found a new revision of the Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB lurking on store shelves late last month. Just last week, Western Digital announced its two-platter Scorpio Black 750GB hard drives. Now you’re wondering: is the WD3200BEKT-00PVMT0 a single 320GB platter, or even a short-stroked 375GB platter? We got this particular drive to do a little workout in HD Tune for us.

VR-Zone.com stumbled upon a new revision of the Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB lurking on store shelves late last month, the WD3200BEKT-00PVMT0.

This particular drive was manufactured on 6 December 2010. It is probably one of the earliest -00PVMT0 revision drives to be available.

The back of the WD3200BEKT-00PVMT0 looks no different from other 9.5mm models in Western Digital’s lineup.

At 108g, it does seem to be on the heavy side for a single platter drive. For the record, the two-platter Hitachi 7K500 500GB which we have weighs exactly the same.

Performance

We then put the WD3200BEKT-00PVMT0 through a quick run of HD Tune to roughly gauge its performance.

Sequential Read in HD Tune 4.60

Sequential Write in HD Tune 4.60

Samsung’s SpinPoint MP4 series uses up to two 320GB platters for a maximum capacity of 640GB. From our HD Tune run, it appears that this drive is just about as quick as Samsung’s Spinpoint MP4 series, which makes the WD3200BEKT-00PVMT0 a single platter 320GB drive.

Something that (perhaps only) geeks hate: vibration

Apparently Western Digital did release a (rather slow) single platter 320GB way back in January 2010, the WD3200BEKT-00A25T0. However, that platter design was available only on the 250GB and 320GB Scorpio Blacks. While performance does not surpass the present Scorpio Black 500GB WD5000BEKT-00KA9T0, the WD3200BEKT-00A25T0 was definitely lighter and had very little rotational vibration. Whereas for the WD3200BEKT-00PVMT0 tested today, although it was not as vibration free as the -00A25T0, it was better than the -00KA9T0.

According to users’ feedback, vibrations can be felt through the chassis of several laptops containing the Scorpio Black. On the other hand, Hitachi’s 7K500 boasts best-in-class vibration even with the two-platter 500GB model – it vibrates less than even a single platter Scorpio Black.